


this house is falling apart

by gealbhan



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Oblivious Adora (She-Ra), Pining, Roommates, everyone is trans bc i say so, lesbian ally/wingman bow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-08 16:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18898531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: Adora takes a deep breath and (with some careful maneuvering given the five boxes she’s carrying) opens the door. There are already two people inside, standing in the middle of the room. They seem to have been mid-conversation before Adora entered, cutting them off and making them both look her way with surprise.She smiles, a little awkward, and brushes her shirt off. “Hey, I’m Adora,” she says. “Your roommate, I think—if I’m right in assuming you’re Glimmer?”Oh my God, they were roommates.





	this house is falling apart

**Author's Note:**

> written for [glimadora week 2](https://glimadora-week.tumblr.com/post/184672999774/may-19-25-day-1-may-19) day 7: au day! (originally intended for the "domestic" prompt of the first glimadora week -- i wrote about 4k for it then but wasn't able to get the rest out in time ^^; but hey, no time like the present!)
> 
> title is from "anna sun" by walk the moon. enjoy!

Adora stares at the closed door to her dorm room, taking a deep breath as she balances the stack of boxes in her arms. She’d managed to scale three flights of stairs without dropping anything, and at a remarkable speed at that (honestly, why Bright Moon University doesn’t invest in elevators is already a mystery to her), but now, facing the moment of truth, her heart is pounding hard enough against her chest that she’s worried she’s going to drop at least one box on her foot.

_Okay, Adora,_ she tells herself. _It’s all right. You’re just going to meet your roommate, nothing life-changing. Except maybe life-changing, because you’ll be sharing a dorm with her for at least a year—_ ugh.

She’s been exchanging e-mails with said roommate-to-be for two weeks now. They’ve gotten along well enough, even if the e-mails had been infrequent and Adora only knows a few things about her roommate. Her name is Glimmer, her major is as of yet undecided (like Adora), she’s trans (also like Adora; it had been a relief when Glimmer’d been the first one to mention it), she was homeschooled all through elementary and middle school and attended a private high school, and she has pink hair. Oh, and she’s nice, but that hadn’t been a stated fact so much as something Adora had gleaned from their short conversations.

But someone being nice in text-only conversations doesn’t mean she will be in real life. What if Glimmer is actually kind of an asshole and Adora had just been getting her hopes up? What if she hates lowly former public schoolers and scholarship students? What if—

_Okay, okay, just open the door already. Rip the bandage off and all,_ says a sharper voice in the back of Adora’s mind that sounds like Catra. Catra would probably embellish on the “rip the band-aid off” adage with unnecessary gory details, though, and Adora cringes at the very thought.

Enough waiting, she decides nonetheless. She takes a deep breath and (with some careful maneuvering given the five boxes she’s carrying) turns the doorknob.

The sight inside… isn’t what she expects.

The room is small, but not cramped; there’s a living room-type area on one side, a sofa and small television set up inside the space, and a small kitchen behind it, bare but with clear potential. On the other side of the room, there are two single beds. The one on the left is made with soft pink sheets and an assortment of pillows—the other, which Adora takes to be hers, is composed of only a frame and a dubiously stained mattress that Adora is going to replace at her earliest convenience. Most surprising of all, however, is the fact that there are already two people inside, standing in the middle of the room. They seem to have been mid-conversation before Adora entered, cutting them off and making them both look her way with surprise.

Adora lowers the boxes and sizes them up. One is a muscular Black boy wearing a crop top; standing in front of him is a chubby Asian girl with fluffy pink hair, the underside of which has been dyed a blend of purple and blue speckled with white that makes it look like a sunrise glimmering with stars. Her hair isn’t _all_ pink, but it does jog Adora’s memory.

She smiles, a little awkward, and brushes her shirt off. “Hey, I’m Adora,” she says. “Your roommate, I think—if I’m right in assuming you’re Glimmer?”

Probably-Glimmer blinks, looking between Adora and the boxes she’d just carried in all by herself, and oh yeah, Adora’s going to have _such_ DOMS tomorrow. She regrets slacking off for most of the summer after all. Something clicks in Glimmer’s eyes, and she smiles, stepping forward after exchanging a look with the unfamiliar boy.

“Yeah, that’s me. It’s nice to finally meet you in person,” she says, sticking out a hand. Adora shakes it readily—she can’t help but notice the faint freckles on Glimmer’s nose, which is crinkling with her smile. As their hands fall apart, Glimmer pauses. “You’ve got a really firm handshake.”

“Oh, yeah, I had to take lessons in fourth grade.”

“…Hand shaking lessons?”

“Yeah, my caretaker made everyone in the group home take them.” Glimmer’s look only grows odder, eyebrows pinching together, so Adora clears her throat. “Anyway, who’s your friend?”

“Oh! Sorry, this is my best friend, Bow,” says Glimmer, and the boy in question flashes Adora a dazzling grin. “You might as well get used to him now, ‘cause he’s gonna practically be our third roommate. We’ve been best friends, like, forever, so he’ll be hanging out here a lot.”

Adora hesitates. “That’s not technically allowed, is it?”

Glimmer winces. “Well, no,” she says, “but as long as you don’t say anything to the RA, we’re both good at sneaking around. And as long as someone doesn’t fling message arrows through my window, _Bow_ ,” she adds, spinning on him.

“That was one time!” protests Bow, flinging up his hands.

“It was not! It’s not even the arrow thing that bothers me, it’s that you didn’t even shoot it, you just threw it through my window from a tree outside! Like, what?! Who does that?”

Adora can’t help but laugh, making both turn to her with slightly abashed expressions. “Nice to meet you, Bow,” she says now that she’s got his attention.

The indignation clears from his face at once. “Oh, same here,” he says. His easy smile makes Adora’s shoulders untense. “Not only will you get to know me, you’ll get to know my rotating cast of crop tops, so get used to that, too.”

Adora glances down. His crop top is light pink—the same tone as Glimmer’s hair—and sleeveless, what looks like a gray binder faintly visible underneath. There’s a simplistic, pastel-colored unicorn drawing on the front, white horn and rainbow hair both sparkling.

“Looking forward to it,” says Adora with a nod. She shoots a quick, nervous look toward Glimmer, who smiles, making Adora’s small smile a little more confident. “I really like this shirt—I love unicorns. I, um, really wanted one when I was a kid, but I had to settle for Horsey instead.”

“Horsey?” echoes Glimmer.

“Yeah, my—” A wave of embarrassment rushes over Adora, but she flares her nostrils and moves past it as she pops open the top box on the stack she’s kinda forgotten about already. Sitting right inside is a well-loved stuffed animal: a winged unicorn with rainbow wings and an orange mane. There are patches of said mane missing and some of the color gone from the wings, but he’s as soft as ever, and Adora gives him an extra squeeze as she attempts to gather some semblance of dignity while holding a stuffed alicorn. “My buddy here. I’ve had him since I was three, I think?”

“Aw, he’s adorable,” says Bow. “I think Horsey is a great name, by the way.”

Adora rolls her eyes. “Again, three.”

“Hey, I was being serious!” says Bow, though his guilty laugh midway through makes it hard to believe.

Glimmer considers Horsey, stroking her chin for a second before she says, matter-of-fact, “Swift Wind.” When both Adora and Bow turn to look at her, she blushes. “I used to really want a pegasus, so I have a lot of names in the back of my head.”

“Oh my God, I remember that.” Bow laughs and nudges her in the side. “You were a _total_ horse girl. When we were little,” he says to Adora in a stage whisper that makes her lean closer, “she always used to tell me she wanted a horse—but specifically a wild horse, y’know, like the ones in horse movies, where the shy, friendless horse girl has to train the untrainable stallion so she can participate in an upcoming race and, like, they fall in love, except not like that. Hopefully. Glimmer really wanted to be in one of those movies.”

“Bow!” hisses Glimmer, swatting him in the arm. He rubs his elbow, exaggerating a wince, but he can’t quite wipe the satisfied smile from his face.

Neither, it seems, can Adora. Watching them, a feeling of homesickness flashes over her, and she squeezes Horsey a little tighter to her chest. She’d expected it, this being the first time she’d been away from home (and her being the first one in their once tight-knit community to head off), but not quite this soon. She bites her lip, and—

And realizes Glimmer’s talking, so she snaps back to the conversation at hand, making a mental note to text the group chat later. “You were pretty excited about my future horse for all the mounted archery stunts you thought you could do,” she’s saying as she jabs Bow’s shoulder with a finger. Bow opens his mouth in protest, but before he can say anything, Glimmer turns back to Adora with a beam oozing pride. “He’s here on a full-ride archery scholarship.”

That makes all of Adora’s worries vanish in a blink. “Hey, I’m on a sports scholarship too! MMA for me, though.” She flexes for emphasis, glad for the dry heat giving her an excuse to utilize her collection of muscle tanks. “And I sword fight, but I couldn’t get a scholarship for that.” To her dismay. “Oh, and I played football in middle and high school sometimes, but I didn’t like it that much.”

Bow squeezes Glimmer’s arm. Glimmer, Adora notes with concern, is staring fixedly at Adora’s arm raised arm and wearing a vacant expression, mouth parted and eyebrows slack. She’s about to ask if she’s okay when Bow whispers, “She’s a cool jock and she accepts archery as a sport, Glimmer. I love her.”

Adora laughs, rubbing her neck. She looks at the stuffed animal still cradled in her arms with a smile.

“I think Swift Wind is a great name.”

♡

Bow doesn’t end up leaving the dorm until late that night, when, in the middle of an impromptu card game (they find an UNO deck in one of Adora’s boxes and Adora insists on a quick game) that Adora is very badly losing, Glimmer decides it’s time for her and Adora to crack down on unpacking and kicks him out. He drops his cards with a heavy sigh but goes without much else fanfare.

“My dads want me back before curfew, anyway,” he claims as he gets up, patting Glimmer’s head and getting his wrist waved away, “and I think I’m about at that limit, so I’ll see you two ladies later.” He winks and clicks two finger guns at them as he backs out of the room.

When Glimmer gets up to close the door with a little eyeroll, the air gets a bit colder, at least to Adora. The silence hits her harder than she expects. At once, she wants to fill it—Bow had done a great job at that, and despite being comfortable with Glimmer, too, she kind of wants him back for a split second.

But there’s just the two of them, so as Adora’s heart rate spikes, she says, “So Bow’s here on an archery scholarship?”

Glimmer, who’s already turned to start emptying a heap of bags lying beside her bed, hums but doesn’t turn around or respond in any other way. She probably wants peace and quiet, Adora thinks.

And then, because her mouth is at odds with her brain at most times, she blurts, “What about you? I learned a lot about Bow in the past few hours, but not nearly as much about you, so I’m just kinda curious.”

She claps a hand over her mouth, but it’s the truth. Glimmer had shied away from talking about herself, for the most part, even when Bow had given her clear windows to, so Adora and Bow had been the main ones to divulge personal information. And Adora would like to know more. Maybe it’s just because she hasn’t said much about herself, but maybe—

“My mom’s paying my tuition,” says Glimmer, lifting her head but not facing Adora. “Well—my mom _and_ my aunt are. But mostly my mom.”

“Your whole tuition?” says Adora, blinking and thinking of the student loans she’ll have to take out even with a scholarship. “Whoa. Your family must be—” _All sparkle, no substance,_ says Catra’s voice at the back of her mind. “—really generous.”

“I guess.” Glimmer shrugs, then dumps a drawstring backpack out onto her bed. A few stuffed animals—which makes Adora smile—and a pile of clothing—seeming to mostly be shirts but Adora thinks she spies a literal, actual cape, blue and sparkling—come spilling out. Glimmer turns to face the sliding closet in the back of the room, right beside the bathroom door. “Hey, do you mind if I—”

“We can each have half of the closet,” offers Adora. She closes some of her boxes and stacks them again so she can lug them over to her bed, where she unceremoniously drops them.

Glimmer is staring again when she looks up, though she looks away when she notices Adora has caught her. Huh, thinks Adora with a frown. Is it—oh, yeah, she’d just lifted five cardboard boxes and carried them a couple feet like it was a normal thing to do (not that she hadn’t already done that, and over a greater distance, but there hadn’t been anyone in the stairwell then). That usually got people’s attention. Right off the bat, her roommate thinks she’s a freak. Nice going, Adora.

“Um—” she starts, but Glimmer interrupts, “Do you mind if I put some posters up?”

Adora blinks. Several posters in tube form are now on the floor, presumably having been emptied from the box Glimmer is now holding. “Oh, yeah, sure,” she says, waving a hand. “I mean, go ahead. I mean, I don’t mind.”

“Cool,” says Glimmer, seemingly opting not to comment on Adora’s current social ineptitude. She shoves a pushpin between her teeth (point out) and tosses three others onto her nightstand, then—while Adora has a minor heart attack—climbs onto her bed with one of her posters in hand.

“This seems dangerous.”

Glimmer snorts, unfurling her poster. “I’ve done this, like, a billion times,” she says, muffled by the pushpin still in her mouth. “And my bed at home isn’t even touching the ground. It’s totally fi—”

Time slows down as Glimmer’s foot slips and she stumbles backward. Adora doesn’t pause to think for a second before she rushes in, adrenaline taking over as she crosses the short distance between their beds to catch Glimmer before she hits the floor.

And catch her she does. Adora manages to steady Glimmer’s back and legs, one arm secure around her knees as she cradles her in a reflexive bridal carry. Glimmer blinks up at her, somehow still holding a pushpin in one hand and a rolled-up poster in another. They stare at each other for a silent, stunned moment before Adora realizes that yes, this is _actually_ happening, she’s really just holding her roommate whom she met for the first time only hours ago bridal-style. Face warm, she lowers Glimmer to her feet as fast as she can without hurting her.

“Why, um. Why don’t I put your posters up,” she says, trying to get her pulse back to a normal rate, and a flustered Glimmer quickly agrees.

So Adora takes the poster Glimmer’s already holding and the pushpin, though she sets this one with its fellows instead of holding it in her mouth. That’d be all kinds of dangerous, not to mention unsanitary. She’s sure she remembers something about how easily germs can spread even if one doesn’t contact another person’s skin or bodily fluids, and saliva is a bodily fluid, right? So she doesn’t want to mix hers with Glimmer’s, however indirectly. And oh God, now she’s standing on top of a bed and should be paying closer attention to her surroundings.

In her panic, Adora bumps her head on the disturbingly low ceiling. She flashes Glimmer a confident thumbs-up without looking at her, deciding to kneel. That might be safer anyway. She unfurls the poster and presses it to the wall, blinking at the familiar faces she finds.

“Holy shit, I used to love _He-Man_ ,” she says, careful not to rip the edges in her excitement. “I haven’t seen any of it in ages, though.”

“I’ve got a DVD set somewhere in the things I haven’t unpacked yet,” says Glimmer, an audible smile in her voice. “I made sure I took it with me, in case my roommate was a heathen who’d never seen it—or worse, never even heard of it. Or was a sensible person who wanted to rewatch it one day.”

Adora holds her palm to the top of the poster, making sure all the wrinkles are smoothed out, and reaches behind her for a pushpin. “Yeah, I’d love to do that sometime.” She sticks the pushpin in and smooths the poster out again. One corner down, three to go. “When we were kids, one of my housemates used to joke that I was He-Man’s long-lost twin sister. ‘Cause of the hair, see?” She points to her blonde ponytail.

Glimmer laughs. “I can see the resemblance.” Adora turns in time to see her twiddling her thumbs, though she doesn’t get to look long before she’s grabbing another pushpin and turning back. “Before I realized I was gay, I actually, uh, had a huge crush on him.”

“God, me too,” says Adora. “Though I guess mine was weirder because of the whole twins joke.”

“None of us can ever hope to understand compulsory heterosexuality’s workings,” says Glimmer grimly.

Adora laughs and nods as she sticks the last pushpin in. She slips off Glimmer’s bed and gestures to the poster, unwrinkled and perfectly stuck to the wall. “There you go. Want anything else put up?”

Glimmer’s stare seems more awed than odd, this time, and Adora basks in it with a smile and her fists on her hips in a caped superhero pose. After a moment, Glimmer shakes her head.

“Thank you so much—seriously, thanks,” she adds when Adora shrugs as if to say _it’s what I do_. “But I think I should let you unpack your things and then get a good night’s rest. We can put more stuff up tomorrow, right?”

“I really don’t mind—”

“No, no, it’s cool.” Glimmer grabs up the other rolled-up posters and shoves them into the empty backpack leaning against her bed. “I’ve gotta get my clothes sorted out, anyway.”

While Glimmer’s doing that, Adora fishes her phone out of her shorts pocket. No battery. Ugh, she knew she shouldn’t have listened to so much music on the drive over—or had Candy Crush running in the background the entire time, oops. She searches through her boxes for her charger, finding it in the third box she checks, wall outlet still thankfully attached. She doesn’t bother untangling it (very much a lost cause by now) before she plugs her phone into the wall. It beeps and informs her her battery is at 31%.

“Why do you always display my battery wrong?”

“Get an Android,” Glimmer calls from the other side of the room.

Adora rolls her eyes. “I was talking to my phone, but thanks. I think it’s more that it’s five years old than that it’s an iPhone.”

“No, it’s totally the iPhone thing, sorry to inform you.” Glimmer shrugs, then pauses. “Also, _what_? You should definitely be replacing it now anyway. Your battery and everything gets slower the older your phones get, which is ninety-nine percent a marketing ploy to make you buy new phones, for sure, but it does also mean your phone sucks.”

“Hey, I like this phone,” defends Adora, though her actual feelings fall more on the aggravation-leaning ambivalence side of things. “And—” she looks away “—I don’t really have the money to get a new phone right now, okay?”

Glimmer doesn’t reply for a few moments. Upon thinking she’s probably not going to, Adora fiddles with her phone to see how many times Catra has texted her—the answer, as it turns out, is a lot. There are a few from Lonnie and Kyle in the group home’s chat, too, but most of those aren’t about or directed to her. Adora texts Catra back, assuring her she isn’t dead or gone forever and can everyone stop worrying now, _please_ , she’ll be fine. Midway through typing that last assurance, a throat clears.

When she looks up, Glimmer is sitting on her own bed, pile of clothes abandoned, with her hands linked in her lap. “So, um, my mom and aunt kinda decided to pool some money together a couple months ago and gave me a little to start the school year off with. And I mean, phones are important! So it wouldn’t take too much off that if I bought you one.”

Adora holds up her hands. “Whoa, whoa. We did just meet, and I don’t need you to do that for me. I can live with a crappy phone for now.” She wiggles the aforementioned crappy phone in the air for emphasis, gesturing at her perfectly working text screen. Glimmer looks conflicted, so she adds, “Really. I’m fine.” _Nothing like repeating “I’m fine” to convince people you’re fine, Adora._

Glimmer sighs. “Okay, yeah, I get it. Hey, at least I already know what to get you for Christmas,” she adds, smiling. “If you celebrate that, anyway.”

An image pops into Adora’s mind at once—the gaudy, if undersized, Christmas trees she and Catra teamed up to force Ms. Weaver to buy and decorate year after year. “Well—we put trees up and decorated them, but we didn’t really celebrate aside from that.”

“Oh, cool. My mom’s family celebrates Christmas, but my dad’s doesn’t, so I’ve kinda got the both of best worlds.” Glimmer’s smile takes on a devious edge. “Also, we’re absolutely going to get the most hideous, pinkest tree we can find when November rolls around, just so you know.”

“November?”

“All the good trees are already gone by December, and no one really merchandises stuff for Thanksgiving, so we’ve gotta be on the hunt as soon as Halloween ends.”

Adora’s eyes are definitely sparkling. “I am _so_ game.”

♡

Over the next few days, Adora settles into being Glimmer’s roommate. The late morning after they meet, they delegate most of the chores and other responsibilities with a whiteboard from Glimmer’s belongings, shaking on it and leaving the whiteboard on the fridge. They lay out most of the rest, everything they hadn’t been able to cover via e-mail, over coffee that afternoon: how late Glimmer sleeps in (very), how early Adora rises (very), how many times a month Glimmer plans on calling home (at least six), how much Glimmer will yell when she calls home (a lot), the likelihood of one of Adora’s friends from home showing up out of the blue (approximately forty percent for the home at large; Catra, ninety), if Adora is going to practice her “sports stuff” in the dorm (not if she can help it), how often Bow will be around (very).

To Adora’s surprise, his presence turns out to be an ice breaker beyond the first day. The day after semester starts, he pops into their dorm room with an overnight bag filled to the brim with movies, and they end up watching _The Princess Bride_ and then most of the _Barbie_ movies until, come sunrise, they’re all passed out on the floor.

The next day is hell, but hey, lifelong friendships are best forged under fire.

And so it seems that that’s what the Best Friend Squad, as Bow decides they should be called about halfway through _Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper_ when Glimmer is already asleep, is set out to be. Bow and Glimmer are already best friends (“and we’ve got the bracelets to prove it,” Glimmer boasts over coffee, lifting her wrist to show a hand-woven bracelet with a pink sapphire pendant), and Bow at least is more than willing to induct Adora into their two-person secret society. Adora and Glimmer don’t interact on their own as much as Adora hopes, but what they _do_ get in endears Adora more and more. So she, for reasons she doesn’t completely understand, makes excuses to spend time with Glimmer whenever she can. Most of the time, it backfires, but it’s still worth it.

So when, three weeks into the school year, the power blows at around four and still isn’t back by six, when they’re both in the dorm, Adora decides to make them dinner.

There are multiple problems with this. The first and most obvious is that the power is out, meaning none of their appliances (cheap to begin with) are in working order. The second and, in Adora’s opinion, more major is that Adora can’t cook. She _can_ bake, but as appealing as pie for dinner sounds, it’s a) breaking the diet her MMA coach has set her on and b) currently impossible anyway because of the first problem. Glimmer, who Adora suspects is living off ramen alone, can’t cook either, though, so they’re both useless. The third is that there’s nothing in their cabinets to cook at the moment, whether with electricity they don’t have or to whip together with their hands.

After this information is laid out, Adora sighs. “Cold leftover pizza it is,” she says. “If the power outage lasts long enough, it’ll go bad anyway, right?”

So her operation to have a spontaneous dinner with Glimmer doesn’t quite go as planned. But once she sets up a couple candles from the deep recesses of Glimmer’s side of the closet and they sit across from each other on the couch, Adora is convinced this is good enough.

As they chew their pizza in unexpectedly calming silence, Adora sneaks glances at Glimmer’s face. The soft light of the fire bounces off her features, illuminating her light brown skin and a few moles around her cheeks as well as the freckles smattered across her nose. Glimmer’s cupid’s bow of a mouth is upturned in a small smile, gaze fixed forward as she eats.

Adora only realizes she’s been staring for too long, letting her pizza slice droop from her mouth as her lips fall open, when a pineapple falls into her lap. She jumps back with a yelp, face heating up—at least the lighting is so dim that her flush probably isn’t noticeable, she thinks with fervor, even if she’s not sure _why_ her face is so red. It isn’t weird to just look at her roommate, right?

Glimmer’s head jerks up. “What’s wrong—?! Oh, nevermind, that’s what you get for eating pineapple pizza,” she says with a scoff. “Sorry, but cheese reigns supreme.”

“Hey, aren’t you lactose intolerant?” says Adora, recalling a milkshake incident Bow had told her about, and Glimmer falters but waves her off. Adora plucks the pineapple from her thigh and tilts her chin up. “Whatever. I’m sorry you’re not a _sophisticated diner_ like me,” she says haughtily, placing an unnecessary accent onto about half of her syllables.

Glimmer snickers. “I’ll take unsophisticated diner over that mess any day.”

“I’ll have you know that pineapple pizza is a luxury where I’m from.”

“Your family must be a lot weirder than mine, then,” says Glimmer, raising her eyebrows and folding her pizza in half before stuffing most into her mouth.

_If only you knew,_ Adora thinks, but what comes out is a frown and, “You haven’t told me much about your family.” Then she blushes. “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, especially not right now, I just—well, I have wondered a little.” A lot, actually, but she’s not going to come right out and say that. They’ve only known each other a few weeks, even if it feels like a lifetime. It’s normal for Glimmer not to have mentioned her family.

…is it abnormal how often Adora’s talked about home, then?

That train of thought slams on the brakes as Glimmer sighs. “Yeah, that’s fair. You’ve told me a lot about your friends, and I’ve been pretty dodgy even though I call my mom, like, twice a week.”

Adora giggles. “It can’t be that often.”

“Sorry, I should’ve said she calls me twice a week,” says Glimmer, rolling her eyes.

“From what you _have_ told me,” says Adora, trying not to inject guilt into her voice because that’s really not where she’s going with this, “she seems really nice. So, you know, I’m sure she’s just worried.”

“I know she is,” says Glimmer, but she doesn’t look too happy about it, brow furrowed and tongue out. “It’s just like _sheesh, let up_ sometimes, you know? I _am_ eighteen. I guess ever since Dad—” She freezes.

Adora nudges her foot with her own. Glimmer jumps but otherwise doesn’t react, gaze somewhere off in the distance. “What’s up with your dad?” prods Adora, gentle as she can. “You’ve only mentioned him a couple of times, and you don’t call him, so—”

“Oh, that one’s easy. He’s dead.”

Adora’s the one to freeze now. “Oh,” she says in a small voice. “I’m… sorry—”

“It’s—well, it isn’t fine, but you don’t have to be sorry.” Glimmer sets her pizza down on the ceramic plate resting on the coffee table, licking the grease from her fingers as she leans back. “I mean, it was when I was really little, so I don’t remember much about him. That’s why my mom’s so protective, I think.”

“It’s still sad,” says Adora.

Glimmer hesitates. “Yeah, it is.” She reaches back down for her pizza but doesn’t move to take another bite before she adds, a smile crossing her face, “There’s a big mosaic portrait of him hanging on the mantle back home. I guess Mom got it commissioned for their wedding, but he ended up really hating it and she wasn’t big on it either—she wanted something more like, I don’t know, a stained glass painting—so they hid it in the back of a closet until I was born.”

That startles a laugh out of Adora, who almost chokes on another piece of pineapple. Once she sobers enough to speak and isn’t in need of a Heimlich (probably self-administered unless Glimmer somehow knows how to perform it; Adora has no idea, since it hasn’t exactly come up), she says, “So it’s just you and your mom?”

“For almost as long as I can remember, yeah.” Glimmer stuffs the entire crust in her mouth, taking a long few moments to chew and swallow before she speaks again. “Well, okay, not _just_ me and Mom. My dad’s sister has helped out a lot, too, but—” She wrinkles her nose. “Ugh, okay, I’m not nearly out of it enough to talk about my aunt. She’s nice and all, and she has been a big help both to me and Mom, but she’s kinda… overbearing. And snooty.”

“I know how that is,” says Adora with a nod, even though she’s pretty sure it’s not under the same context. “You’ve said your mom and aunt have a lot of money, right? What does your mom do?”

Glimmer makes a nervous sound, half-laugh and half-cough. “This is gonna sound dumb, but I don’t actually know,” she says. “Like, I know in theory—she’s the head of this big nonprofit, the Princess Alliance, that helps people in need. Habitat For Humanity meets a non-homophobic Salvation Army meets… I don’t actually really know any other big helpful organizations like that, so let’s just say all of them.”

Adora smiles. “Sounds cool.”

“Yeah, it is pretty neat. But I don’t know in detail what she does.” Glimmer picks at a piece of stuffing spilling out of the couch. “She wants me to take over the organization someday, but I don’t really know what I want to do in general, let alone if I wanna be the heiress to something so important.” She shakes her head, eyes starting to look a little glossy.

“Sorry,” Adora hurries to say. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s not your fault, I’m just not really over all of this,” says Glimmer with a small laugh, gesturing widely to indicate _all of this_. “But hey, you just wanted to hear about my family, so: it’s sorta messed up, but if pressed, I’ll say it’s a lot better than nothing.”

The candle’s light wobbles as they lapse into a decidedly less warm silence, Adora continuing to watch Glimmer’s face flickering under the gentle glow and Glimmer herself looking down, blinking hard. Adora clenches her jaw. She’s not going to apologize again, thinking it’d just make things worse, but—

She _can_ do something stupid but hopefully enough so to lighten the mood. She lifts her slice of pizza (only about a third finished because her appetite is starting to dissipate and the week-and-a-half-old cold pizza hadn’t been a great idea in the first place) as if for a toast. “To messed up families.”

Glimmer stares at her. As her gaze flits up and down Adora, something like horror in her wide eyes, she breaks into a grin, only a little shit-eating, and grabs a second piece of pizza out of the tin on the coffee table. “To messed up families,” she repeats, knocking her pizza against Adora’s. Carefully avoiding the pineapples on Adora’s slice, she notices but doesn’t comment on—she’ll make a pineapple pizza lover out of Glimmer yet, but not yet.

The next bite tastes sweeter than any pizza Adora’s ever had in her life.

♡

That weekend, Glimmer—passed out on the couch from a night of furious studying for the pop quiz she had told Adora she’s sure her lit teacher is going to spring on the class next week—wakes when Adora is cleaning. Hearing ominous mumbling, Adora whirls, Swiffer in hand and raised like it’s a sword. At the sight of Glimmer stirring beneath the cozy fuzzy blanket Adora had laid over her, though, she lowers the Swiffer and smiles.

“Good morning,” she says, though she’s pretty sure it’s afternoon now.

“Mor—” Glimmer yawns, cutting herself off, and rolls onto her back, clinging to the edges of the blanket. “G’mornin’.” Her eyes flutter shut and then immediately snap open again as she bolts up. She glances Adora up and down in a way that makes her flush and readjust the grip on the Swiffer. “Are you cleaning?”

“Yep!” Adora grins. “Back home, I cleaned the house every other weekend once I was old enough, so I thought I’d keep the tradition up here. I’m already done with the bathroom and the kitchen, and I’m—” she sweeps in demonstration “—almost done here. But I’ll leave your half of the room to you.”

Glimmer rubs her eyes. “No, I think you should clean that, too, since you’re doing a really nice job already.” Then she grimaces. “Actually, I don’t want you looking too closely at everything I have piled on the floor.”

Adora laughs. She strolls over to the couch and shifts the Swiffer to one hand so she can pat Glimmer’s forehead. “I’m heading down to the laundromat later, too, so don’t worry. I’ve got it covered.”

“My hero,” sighs Glimmer, no hint of sarcasm, before flipping onto her side again, this time facing away from Adora.

A strange feeling flutters through Adora’s stomach. _I guess I just like being someone’s hero,_ she thinks, and it makes sense, though something about it feels off. _Do I like being_ Glimmer’s _hero?_ Her heartbeat picks up.

She brushes it off, though, and continues cleaning.

♡

Halfway through November, Adora is waken up early by Glimmer on a Saturday morning. This would be startling in and of itself, given Glimmer’s tendency to sleep in until the late afternoon on weekends, and enough to make Adora jolt awake even if she hadn’t only gotten maybe two hours of sleep altogether. (Bow had been over for another movie night, though he must have left at some point during the night.)

More shocking is Glimmer saying, “Hey, I’m going to the grocery store. Wanna come with?”

Adora can’t get dressed fast enough.

As it turns out, since they’ve managed to survive either on their stockpile of food from the beginning of the school year or have gone to the store on their own enough that they haven’t needed to go shopping together yet, their tastes are very different. So different that Glimmer takes one look at the list in Adora’s Notes app and walks the other way without so much as a word. Only after Adora’s walked the opposite direction like a lost child being called to the front by a bored customer service rep, does it occur to her that everything she needs is on the side of the store she’s walking toward.

She also doesn’t need much, though, so after she’s piled everything within her budget into a shopping basket, she sets off to find Glimmer and does within minutes. The hair is hard to miss, after all, even from a distance. (Adora’s not actually sure how she manages to dye it so often. The presence of so many empty boxes of hair dye in their bathroom are the only things even pointing to the involvement of hair dye at all.) Glimmer is in the cereal aisle, up on tiptoes with a frustrated expression as she grapples for the highest shelf.

_Cute,_ Adora thinks on reflex, nothing odd about it as she walks forward. She hovers behind Glimmer, reaching up to grab the cereal she’d been trying to get to.

“Need some help?”

Glimmer sucks in a startled breath, sharp enough that, with how close they are, Adora can almost feel it. Adora steps back, stomach tightening as soon as she does, with the cereal in hand, giving Glimmer room to turn around. After a second, Glimmer does, flushed pink—from the exertion of a couple moments prior, Adora guesses.

“Thanks,” says Glimmer, smiling. “You caught me before I had to climb onto the bottom shelves and probably get kicked out in the process.”

She reaches up to pat Adora’s arm and take the cereal box from her. Their fingers brush in the process, and Adora’s tingling hands hover in midair for a split second before she, reddening, drops them back to her sides. Glimmer tosses the cereal into her own basket, overflowing with instant noodles.

“But that’s the last thing I need, so let’s go check out, okay?” says Glimmer, already headed that way at a pace almost too fast for Adora to follow.

The tightly-wound cocoons in Adora’s stomach burst into millions of little butterflies.

Lucky thing she’s got long legs, she thinks as she pads after Glimmer like a duckling, the inklings of something beginning to piece themselves together in the far reaches of her mind.

♡

Life goes on.

Adora and Glimmer stay afloat in their classes as autumn flies by, and then the beginning of winter. Glimmer goes home for winter break, bemoaning the parties (plural, she insists) her aunt is going to throw while she packs but also seeming delighted about getting to see her mother in person again. Adora stays at school instead, breaking her promises to Ms. Weaver and the other kids. _I’ll be back for spring break,_ she tells them. _Promise—for real, this time. I’m just really busy with working ahead and I don’t want to get too used to being home._

It’s not a _complete_ lie. Sure, being away from home is a breath of fresh air, to say the least, even if Adora’s classes are rough and her homesickness keeps festering and her feelings for her roommate are a convoluted knot in her stomach. But if she went home now, she’s not sure she’d be able to leave again. It’s not that she wouldn’t want to—she likes it here, both the people and the setting, it’s just that she thinks she’d get sucked in by the familiarity and comfort she’d known most of her life before deciding it was the time to branch out, and college was perfect for that. Adora’s had enough of “same old, same old.”

She still Skypes Catra often, though she mostly avoids the others (she shies away from the word _ignore_ , but that might be more accurate). She even gets Catra and Glimmer to meet. It’s an odd conversation, Adora sitting to the side as her at-home best friend and one of her at-college best friends have an exchange that seems full of double meanings and unprecedented tension (on Glimmer’s side, at least), and Glimmer doesn’t bring it up again. Catra, on the other hand—

“Hey, Adora. How’s your girlfriend?” is the first thing out of her mouth the next time Adora calls.

Adora flushes all the way to the base of her ponytail. “She’s not—she’s just my roommate,” she says, glad Glimmer herself isn’t in the room now.

Catra gives her a deadpan look. “Sure,” she says, inspecting her claw-like nails, and then changes to another topic, but she keeps giving Adora pointed looks throughout their conversation.

It hovers at the back of Adora’s mind, becoming like a scab that she keeps picking at despite the warning signs of infection.

One sunny day, rare through winter but becoming more common as March approaches, she can’t take it anymore. “Can I ask you about something?” she asks Bow.

They’re sitting together in Adora and Glimmer’s dorm, Glimmer in class and Bow having miscalculated her schedule but decided to stick around until she got back anyway. Adora is picking at the torn knee of her jeans. They haven’t really spoken up until this point, not out of discomfort but almost the opposite, content to exist with each other.

Bow takes a loud sip of his Capri Sun, sets it down on the coffee table, and pats the seat beside him. Unnecessary, since Adora is already sitting on the couch next to him. She makes no move to scoot closer. “Pretty sure you already did, but shoot.”

Adora plunges right in. “So I’ve been feeling weird for a while now.”

“Weird how?”

“It feels like there’s a—a knot in my chest, sometimes,” she says, clapping a hand over her heart. “And my stomach. I get really nervous, but more than normal, I think, because I usually, uh, sweat a ton—kinda like how I used to get when I played football.” She wrings her hands, which are clamming up as she speaks. “At the same time, though, it’s not, like, anxiety-nervous, because I’m happy, and when all this tightness and stuff goes away, I feel like I’m floating. Walking on air.” She sighs, leaning back against the couch.

“Mm-hmm, I see, I see,” says Bow, stroking his chin with intense thought. “Well… does this happen around a particular person?”

There’s a certain mischief to his arched eyebrows and voice, but Adora brushes that off. Frowning, she nods. “Yeah. Glimmer. Not just when I’m around her, but sometimes when she’s not around and I’m thinking about her.”

Bow fiddles with his best friend bracelet for a moment. Adora, impatient, is about to say something when he grins sagely and turns back to face her. “Well, Adora, my friend, it sounds like you have a crush.”

Silence as those words ring in Adora’s ears, pounding just as loudly as her blood seems to be all of a sudden. A crush.

A _crush_.

“Oh my God,” says Adora. She buries her face, now on fire, in her hands and resists the urge to scream—it would draw too much attention from their neighbors, not that it wouldn’t be excellent payback for the heavy metal and/or sex noises at three in the morning. “Ohhh my God. Oh my—”

“—God, yeah, I figured,” interrupts Bow.

“ _Oh my God!”_ Okay, so _not disturbing the neighbors_ just went out the window. Not disturbing Bow, more like, judging by the fingers he’s not-so-subtly stuffed into his ears when Adora glances between the slits in her fingers at him. Adora takes a deep breath and presses her fingers to her nose. “Holy shit, Bow, you’re right. Bow, I like her. I like her so much.”

Bow drops his fingers from his ears. His shoulders are shaking the slightest bit, but he copies Adora’s slow inhale and pats her arms—and then stops, mouth half-open. “Whoa, I knew you were pretty built, but jeez, Adora, you should let me in on your fitness routine— _a-hem_ , not the point, sorry.” He gives her a sheepish grin. “Sooo… what do you like about Glimmer?”

Adora drops her head into her hands again. This is awful. “No,” she groans, helpless to do anything about the tide of emotions rushing over her. “I can’t talk about this. I’m gonna—I have to—I have classes, I have to leave, I’ve gotta go to—to space right—!”

“Slow down, slow down,” Bow says, still holding her arms in place. When she lifts her head, he’s giving her a much kinder smile than the hangdog one of a couple minutes ago. He squeezes her biceps soothingly before letting go. Adora holds herself back from leaping for the door, but her leg won’t stop twitching. “What’s up? C’mon, talk to Uncle Bow.”

Adora glares.

“Aw, really, no takers?” Bow sighs and drops his hands into his lap. “Fine, talk to your BFF Bow. He’s nicer and less creepy, anyway.”

Bow is expecting Adora to say something—even she’s not oblivious enough to not pick up on the very, very pointed look she’s being given (probably), but she can’t seem to find the words. Her mouth opens, then shuts just as fast. She crosses her arms and looks to the side, almost guilty.

But Bow seems to have realized something from her silence—his eyes widen as he leans back. “Hey, Adora, you’re not uncomfortable because Glimmer is… a girl, right? Because it’s—”

“What? No, no, of course that’s not it!” says Adora in almost a yelp, eyes even wider than Bow’s as she moves to sit up, posture going about as straight as she isn’t. “I realized I was a lesbian basically as soon as I realized I was a girl, and I’m comfortable with that. Trust me, Glimmer being a girl isn’t it.” She drags her legs back toward her chin and rests her jaw on her knees, sighing. “She’s just—she’s one of the first friends I’ve ever had that I didn’t grow up with, you know? And she’s my roommate, too! What if I tell her I like her and she doesn’t feel the same way and I not only screw up our friendship but entire living situation? Oh, and my friendship with you too, probably, ‘cause you’ve known her longer so you’d take her side—”

Bow grimaces. “Okay, first off, trans solidarity, hell yeah,” he says, and Adora rolls her eyes but accepts the fistbump he’s offering. “And second off, I totally understand your concerns, but at the same time, nuh-uh, no way! Glimmer’s not that kind of person—even if she didn’t like you back, and I say _even if_ because—well, we’ll get back to that, the point is that she wouldn’t be mean about it. And I wouldn’t take sides unless either of you were mean about it. Which you aren’t going to be, right?”

“What would I even be mean about?”

“Right answer.” Bow gives her a thumbs-up, then bites his lip. “And I really, really don’t think that Glimmer doesn’t like you back.”

Adora’s jaw clicks open. “What? What do you mean? Did she say something? I—what?”

“Again, calm down, because if you stress out then you’re going to stress _me_ out and that’s not going to be at all productive,” says Bow, voice cracking halfway through. Adora nods mechanically. “Awesome, thanks for your cooperation. Okay, so, deep breaths, okay? Great. No, she hasn’t said anything, but I know Glimmer really well. Super-duper well. Better than anyone else living, I would say, including her entire family—”

“What’s your point?”

Bow lifts his hands. “Chillax, I was getting to that.” He clears his throat. “I know Glimmer’s type, and I know how she gets around girls she likes. Which is how I know there’s at least an eighty-percent chance that she likes you too, and she’s not saying anything because you’re not saying anything but _you’re_ not saying anything because _she’s_ not saying anything, like the most convoluted game of gay chicken ever. Lesbian courtship is a vicious cycle, Adora.”

“Gee, thanks for the reassurement.” Adora glares at the ceiling instead of at Bow, because he’s probably right. “So there’s nothing I can do? I’m just doomed to my crush for all of eternity?”

“Weren’t you listening? There’s one big, big thing you’ve gotta do.” Bow takes both of Adora’s hands in his own, warm and slightly sweaty palms sandwiching Adora’s clasped palms. He squeezes her and gives her a searching look, looking right into her eyes. “Don’t be a casualty of lesbian sheep syndrome. Tell her.”

The door clicks open, and Bow and Adora both hop off the couch like they’ve been shocked. In the doorway, Glimmer looks up, holding her laptop up with one hand and clutching her key with the other. She frowns at the state her two friends have found themselves in. The room is dead silent as she setps over the threshold, flashing Bow and Adora a wary smile and asking, “Everything okay?”

Adora bolts.

(Okay, so she doesn’t _bolt_ so much as she speedwalks out the door, almost bowling Glimmer over on the way, as she yells some half-baked excuse about forgetting her books at the library over her shoulder. It’s just as embarassing, though.

Halfway to the library, she realizes she doesn’t actually have any books there, so she decides to check out to justify her story, grabbing as many books related to an essay she already needs to write as possible. She’s almost falling over with the sheer weight of her books when she walks back in an hour later. Bow is still there, studying with Glimmer now that she’s there, and they’re sitting on the floor in front of the couch. Adora dumps her books onto her bed, panting as she leans back.

Bow winks and moves over to make a space for her… right next to Glimmer, who doesn’t seem to notice. Adora holds herself back from flipping him off only because she takes the seat.)

♡

Adora is tempted, after that, to ignore Bow’s suggestion and forget about the whole ordeal. To resort herself to the blissful ignorance of her own feelings and, when that inevitably fails, resign herself to a chaste life of unrequited feelings, watching Glimmer fall in love from a distance with a pained smile and never quite getting over it even when she meets other people, always hoping at the back of her mind they’ll manage to meet each other in the middle someday.

Then she decides, fuck that noise, she will _not_ fall victim to “lesbian sheep syndrome,” as Bow calls it. Pining be damned, she’s going to grab this unicorn by the horn and ride it straight into battle.

…okay, bad metaphor. But after a night of getting too distracted by Glimmer’s occasional jokes and even more occasional dimples to study and flunking a quiz the next day as a result, Adora tells herself she has to have an actual reason to be lovesick. Her brain, addled by sleep deprivation and the aforementioned crush, decides that the best way to do this is to go with Bow’s advice and confess. Except she can’t think of an actual way to do that other than being direct, and she definitely doesn’t have a plan. It’ll be fine if she wings it, right? She’ll know when the moment is right, she tells herself.

So, in the middle of doing the dishes (one of their shared responsibilities, and something Adora had been an outlier back home—and here—for enjoying) two weeks before spring break, Adora looks over at Glimmer in the sunlight, mid-laugh, and blurts, “I have feelings for you.”

The ensuing _crash_ echoes through the room. Adora’s not entirely sure what’s happened until she looks down and sees the pieces of plastic that were once the bowl Glimmer had just been washing all over the ground. She starts to lean down, but Glimmer is already crouching to pick up the plastic, face tilted away from Adora and bangs covering her eyes.

“Um,” says Adora, reaching out.

Glimmer scoops the shards of plastic into her cupped palms and dumps them into the trash can, then turns back to Adora. Her face is blank, and her tone even when she says, “What do you mean, ‘feelings for me?’”

Adora shuffles her feet. “Uh, I mean that I like you. Romantically. That is. Um, I-I was talking with Bow the other day—no, no, wait, I’m not going to bring up our best friend right now.” In her head, she’d been a lot more eloquent and suave about this, just short of literally sweeping Glimmer off her feet. (Well, she guesses that’s already happened.) She hadn’t pictured this consisting of her stuttering and waving her (sweaty. _Why_ are they so sweaty?) hands around a lot. She takes a breath, since Glimmer is still silent. “Okay, so, the other day, I realized that I had a huge crush on you, and I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t think it was the right time until now. Um.” Her voice cracks. “Thoughts?”

Glimmer doesn’t react other than a slight twitch of the mouth, though Adora can’t tell if it’s upward or downward before her face settles into neutral territory again.

Adora scrubs her face with her hands, rubbing her eyes hard enough that colors burst against her eyelids. Maybe this is all a bad dream, she tells herself with her only remaining brain cell, but with that same dangling thread keeping her sane, she keeps herself from making things weirder by pinching her bicep to check. She takes a deep breath. “Can I start over?”

She peeks out between her fingers to see Glimmer still in place, arms now crossed and hip resting against the counter. She doesn’t seem to have processed any of Adora’s words.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Okay, I—it’ll be better this time, I swear.” Adora only has a half-second to wonder whether that’s a promise to herself or Glimmer before she lowers her hands, puffs out her chest, and rambles in a tone more associated with a soldier pledging her allegiance, “I like you, romantically, and I think I have for a while, but I didn’t realize until… not that long ago. But I don’t want to ruin our friendship and I definitely don’t want to make—” she gestures at their shared room “—this weird, so if you don’t feel the same w—” She’s cut off by two lukewarm hands settling on either of her cheeks. Glimmer is leaning up on the tips of her toes, face flushed and mouth parted, to hold her face. “Um. Hey. What’s—?”

“Do you really like me?” says Glimmer, voice smaller than Adora’s ever heard from her. “You aren’t making fun of me, or anything like that?”

“I would never,” says Adora immediately, affronted. She reaches up, tentative, to curl her hands around Glimmer’s wrists where they’re hovering by her face. “I really like you.”

For a split second, Glimmer looks like she’s about to cry. Adora tenses, dropping her hands at once, but she’s only a couple of stuttered words into an apology when she’s cut off by a small, delighted laugh.

“Oh, thank fuck,” says Glimmer, and Adora’s words leave her mouth in one sudden breath as another pair of lips meet hers.

It’s—awkward. Adora doesn’t know what to do with her hands, which sort of hover in the air for a split second before migrating to Glimmer’s upper arms. She’s certain that her lips have about the consistency and passion of a dead fish. The height difference is more noticeable than ever as Glimmer almost knocks Adora over with how much force she’s using to lean up; Adora tries to make up for it by leaning down, but since they’re already kissing and—

Wait. _Oh God._ They’re _kissing_. Adora is kissing Glimmer—or more accurately, Glimmer is kissing her. Adora realizes her eyes have been open this whole time, fixed not on Glimmer’s face but a point somewhere above her head, and she squeezes them shut.

This has been going on for much longer, Adora is sure, closed-mouth kisses should. She’s about to pull away—before she can, Glimmer, apparently realizing the same thing, does.

Glimmer falls back onto the balls of her feet, one hand still cupping Adora’s hot cheek and the other somehow having sneaked down to her bicep during the kiss. Adora resists the urge to flex into her just to show off. (Running over Glimmer’s past reactions to her flexing and realizing, not for the first time, what an idiot she is, she thinks it might not be unwarranted, but she’ll save it for another time.) For a second, they simply watch each other, eyes wide and cheeks cherry red, and then—

“Okay, you’re not a great kisser, to be honest,” says Glimmer, tilting her head.

“I—hey! You—”

“But that’s not a _total_ deal breaker.” Glimmer grins like the cat that got the canary, eyes crinkling at the edges and face still filled with color despite her smugness. “Practice makes perfect, and what kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn’t help you practice?”

Adora’s mouth, already dry, gets stuck on one word: “Girlfriend?”

Glimmer freezes. “Oh, God, sorry, I just figured—you know, since you said you like me and we just kissed, and…” Seeing the slow smirk cross Adora’s face, Glimmer cuts herself off, scowls, and steps on Adora’s foot. “Oh, shut up. Fine, do you want to be girlfriends?”

Adora swallows a burst of laughter. Rather than answering in the traditional fashion, she leans down to kiss Glimmer again, arms wrapped around her shoulders and almost lifting her off her feet.

This time goes much better.

(After they pull away and have caught their breaths, Glimmer says, “So that was a yes, right?”

Adora almost rolls her eyes. She doesn’t, only cradling Glimmer’s face in her hands like Glimmer had done before they’d kissed the first time and holding her gaze. “Yes,” she says.

Glimmer grins and buries her face in Adora’s shoulder. “Also,” she mumbles, almost a full three minutes of just basking in each other’s presences later, “the sword fighting thing is really hot.”

Adora doesn’t bother swallowing her laughter this time.)

♡

(The next Friday, Adora Skypes Catra. They get through all their pleasantries—Catra is, in her words, “going out of my fucking mind, it’s so boring here,” and Adora is over the moon, though she tones it down somewhat when Catra asks why she looks so cheerful, chalking it up to no school for two weeks. Then Catra asks what’s new besides her schoolwork and plans to come home (yes, she says for the third time, she’s really going to follow up on them now).

“I have someone I want you to meet, actually,” she says, gesturing Glimmer over from the doorway.

Catra blinks lazily, then rolls her eyes. “I’ve already met your roommate, Adora—”

“She’s not my—well, she is, but not just that anymore.” Adora intertwines her fingers with Glimmer’s, below the line of sight of the webcam, and then raises their linked hands as she beams at Catra, hoping it looks as unwavering as it feels. At the corner of her screen, the tinny image of Glimmer also smiles. “Catra, this is my girlfriend, Glimmer.”

A long stretch of silence.

“Oh my God,” is all Catra says for almost a minute. Her eyes dart between them, slightly off due to the awkward camera angles, and then a fiendish grin creeps across her face, sharp teeth bared. “Weaver’s gonna fucking _flip_. Please tell me you’re bringing her back with you.”

Adora glances at Glimmer, whose face is thoughtful. “Um, I—we hadn’t really—”

“I’d love to come,” says Glimmer, leaning closer to the laptop. She gives Adora a somewhat nervous smile. “I mean, if it’s okay with you, of course.”

Adora is able to hold herself back for only twenty seconds until she says, “Sure thing,” and leans in to kiss Glimmer’s cheek. Glimmer turns her face halfway, making it a peck on the lips.

Catra groans loud enough to send a wave of static over the line.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! if you have time to spare, all comments & kudos are greatly appreciated <3
> 
> [tumblr](https://infernallegaycy.tumblr.com) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/birdmarrow)


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